RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
McGuckin, John.
Flow and Highlights
I will capture the flow of Gregory’s life along with crucial highlights. McGuckin’s thesis suggests something along the lines that Gregory “midwifed” a new Christian vision into the old imperium.
Gregory’s Post-Hellenic Vision
Gregory opted for something like a Christian Hellenism, or rather the New Byzantine vision. This method and vision allowed him to bring order to a then inchoate biblical theology. It was a bridge between the Hellenic and Semitic worlds. He was able to hold apparent opposites in creative tensions, and he refused to collapse mystery and symbol into logical deduction (McGuckin10). In fact, in Gregory’s hands Christology is never allowed to escape its proper context of reflection: “the dynamic mystery of the economy of God’s salvation of humankind” (390).
In order to counteract Julian the Apsotate, Christians had to offer an inspiration for a new imperium and society (117ff). Both Gregory and Julian agreed that “a culture cannot be divorced from its religious inspiration without being fatally compromised.” In this battle Gregory forges a keen anti-Hellenic apologetics. Much of it is similar to Augustine, albeit with the promise that Christianity is able to synthesize old and new (121).
Indeed, the birth of Byzantium is the new public confession of the Spirit as homoousion. Gregory’s confession of the Spirit is the positive triumph of what was best in Origen: it is the present spiritualization of the current order and the ascent to divine vision (309). Gregory is able to do what his master could not: correlate the eschatological vision with historical unfolding.
Gregory vs. Julian
Part of Gregory’s intellectual war against Julian the Apostate was that the former saw the latter’s revival of Iamblichean Theurgy as demonic (58-59). Indeed, Gregory publicly suggested that Julian was insane from summoning too many demons.
“I am ready to abandon all other things, quite willingly; riches, noble status, good reputations, power, and all such earthly concerns that are, all of them, like illusory dreams. But I will cling to the Logos alone” (4.102).
Gregory’s defense of Christian rhetoric was related to the very Christian mission itself.
Vision of New Imperium
Gregory’s social program is connected with his anthropology (151). Image and archetype are reconciled in the hominisation of God as a poor man. The human condition is mixis between clay and divine image.
Further, Gregory preaches this vision after Rome faced several military setbacks. Therefore, if the Oikomene will survive it must be on unity of belief (250).
Monasticism
Gregory says he has seen visions (Carmen Lugubre. 2.1.45, vv. 227-266, PG 37.1369-1372, quoted in McGuckin 220). Two female spirits appeared to him. Gregory breaks with the monastic tradition, which had cautioned against visions, by seeing them as authentication (McGuckin 1996).
Theological Method
This is not merely an attack on Eunomios. It is a vision for theology (263). He attacks two theological positions: a) that the Son and Spirit are without cause (agenetos); and b) they are caused by the Father as something other (hetera) to him.
principle of causality: it is something other than what is meant by God’s causing the created order. It indicates the manner in which the Father relates his being to the other two persons.
Feasting in the Spirit
The doctrine of the Spirit is the mean between Jewish monism and Hellenic polytheism (273). Jews celebrate feasts by the letter, Greeks in the body. Christians feast in the Spirit. As McGuckin notes, this fits in with Gregory’s “matrix of liturgical discourse.”
It is through the Spirit that the Father is known and the Son glorified. The idiomata do not define the essence, but are themselves defined in relation to the essence.
The three stages of revelation are progressively perfected.
The Theological Orations
They have a triadic structure to them. Or. 27 and 28 deal with theologia as our perception of God. Orations 29-30 deal with the Son’s relation to the Father. Oration 31 deal with the Spirit.
The Monarchia of the Father
Works Cited
McGuckin, John. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 2001.
-----------------. “The Vision of of God in S. Gregory Nazianzen” [Acts of the Oxford Int. Patristics Conference, 1995, ed. E. A. Livingstone. Peeters, Leuven]. SP 22, 1996.
Flow and Highlights
I will capture the flow of Gregory’s life along with crucial highlights. McGuckin’s thesis suggests something along the lines that Gregory “midwifed” a new Christian vision into the old imperium.
Gregory’s Post-Hellenic Vision
Gregory opted for something like a Christian Hellenism, or rather the New Byzantine vision. This method and vision allowed him to bring order to a then inchoate biblical theology. It was a bridge between the Hellenic and Semitic worlds. He was able to hold apparent opposites in creative tensions, and he refused to collapse mystery and symbol into logical deduction (McGuckin10). In fact, in Gregory’s hands Christology is never allowed to escape its proper context of reflection: “the dynamic mystery of the economy of God’s salvation of humankind” (390).
In order to counteract Julian the Apsotate, Christians had to offer an inspiration for a new imperium and society (117ff). Both Gregory and Julian agreed that “a culture cannot be divorced from its religious inspiration without being fatally compromised.” In this battle Gregory forges a keen anti-Hellenic apologetics. Much of it is similar to Augustine, albeit with the promise that Christianity is able to synthesize old and new (121).
Indeed, the birth of Byzantium is the new public confession of the Spirit as homoousion. Gregory’s confession of the Spirit is the positive triumph of what was best in Origen: it is the present spiritualization of the current order and the ascent to divine vision (309). Gregory is able to do what his master could not: correlate the eschatological vision with historical unfolding.
Gregory vs. Julian
Part of Gregory’s intellectual war against Julian the Apostate was that the former saw the latter’s revival of Iamblichean Theurgy as demonic (58-59). Indeed, Gregory publicly suggested that Julian was insane from summoning too many demons.
“I am ready to abandon all other things, quite willingly; riches, noble status, good reputations, power, and all such earthly concerns that are, all of them, like illusory dreams. But I will cling to the Logos alone” (4.102).
Gregory’s defense of Christian rhetoric was related to the very Christian mission itself.
Vision of New Imperium
Gregory’s social program is connected with his anthropology (151). Image and archetype are reconciled in the hominisation of God as a poor man. The human condition is mixis between clay and divine image.
Further, Gregory preaches this vision after Rome faced several military setbacks. Therefore, if the Oikomene will survive it must be on unity of belief (250).
Monasticism
Gregory says he has seen visions (Carmen Lugubre. 2.1.45, vv. 227-266, PG 37.1369-1372, quoted in McGuckin 220). Two female spirits appeared to him. Gregory breaks with the monastic tradition, which had cautioned against visions, by seeing them as authentication (McGuckin 1996).
Theological Method
This is not merely an attack on Eunomios. It is a vision for theology (263). He attacks two theological positions: a) that the Son and Spirit are without cause (agenetos); and b) they are caused by the Father as something other (hetera) to him.
principle of causality: it is something other than what is meant by God’s causing the created order. It indicates the manner in which the Father relates his being to the other two persons.
Feasting in the Spirit
The doctrine of the Spirit is the mean between Jewish monism and Hellenic polytheism (273). Jews celebrate feasts by the letter, Greeks in the body. Christians feast in the Spirit. As McGuckin notes, this fits in with Gregory’s “matrix of liturgical discourse.”
It is through the Spirit that the Father is known and the Son glorified. The idiomata do not define the essence, but are themselves defined in relation to the essence.
The three stages of revelation are progressively perfected.
The Theological Orations
They have a triadic structure to them. Or. 27 and 28 deal with theologia as our perception of God. Orations 29-30 deal with the Son’s relation to the Father. Oration 31 deal with the Spirit.
The Monarchia of the Father
- The Son is generated, not from the ousia, but from the Father’s person. Otherwise, the Son, having the same essence, would generate himself! Contra Eunomius, this means ingeneracy or generation is not constitutive of the divine essence.
- The divine being is primarily the Father’s being, not a generic class of being (McGuckin 294 n352). The Father personally communicates this being to the hypostases of the Son and Spirit.
- Gregory draws from the earlier church’s vision of the triad as a single coherent process of unfolding the life of the Father. Therefore, threefoldness is just as much a principle of unity as of differentiation (296 n355).
Works Cited
McGuckin, John. St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 2001.
-----------------. “The Vision of of God in S. Gregory Nazianzen” [Acts of the Oxford Int. Patristics Conference, 1995, ed. E. A. Livingstone. Peeters, Leuven]. SP 22, 1996.
